A sufi was wandering the world.One night he came as a guest to a community of sufis.He tied up his donkey in the stableand then was welcomed to the head of the dais.They went into deep meditation and mystical communion,he and these friends. For such peoplea person’s presence is more to learn fromthan a book.
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I got many responses from you to my last post where I asked Do you the Readers of the Blog want to talk? Are you willing? I didn’t want to answer right away and not let all the comments sink in deeper into my thoughts.
In today’ world where we are really in many ways constricted and pressed for time, who has time to talk on the internet let alone with people one has never met? It is a strange thing to talk about spiritual things with people one has never seen or heard. It really forces one to ask how can we communicate, if we can communicate at all.
On the surface level we can communicate by leaving comments emailing ,or if anyone wants to post something and share in a way that is inclusive of others and doesn’t exclude any group I would be more than happy to post on the blog. But the question I am asking goes deeper than that.
How do We come together?
After I wrote the series of posts about Sharing a Glass of Tea, I asked myself quite often how could we really come together ? In such a way that was not forced that was organic where we could really communicate one human being to another, one heart to another not so much as a Sufi or Rosicrucian, or Yogi. It is a subtle difference coming together as human beings versus coming together through titles and labels.
I have seen within myself and other places that there is this drive we have to free ourselves from the mind in order to get ‘Enlightenment‘ as if it were a commodity or something that one can get through transaction by doing this number of actions, prayers, meditations, analyzing our thoughts this way and performing a certain self reckoning or self analysis. There is nothing inherently wrong with that at all but there is to me at least a slight danger which is while everyone is off on the path we are not engaged in the happenings of this world, we are stuck in the world of my path, my journey when as created being we cannot lay claims to anything really even our own lives, well this what I think.
Slight anecdote if you will allow. I was watching a documentary on shamans in the amazonian rain forest. I pretty much forgot everything in this documentary except the answer a shaman gave as to why he wanted to be a shaman and enroll in the arduous and strenuous course of study. He said simply, my people were sick and needed some help and they had no one. That moved me when I heard it.
I read a saddening note today on teen suicide, on young girls who cut themselves out of in this case feelings of inadequacy. All this fancy spiritual diction, and terms, postures and posturing sometimes don’t mean much.
Every time we connect with each other in a sincere way beautiful things can happen. I remember when I was 12 watching my younger sister play in a playground in Montreal, with children who spoke every language but English, French , Chinese, German, and Canadian (can’t be serious for too long). You couldn’t tell from the joy and running around that these kids didn’t speak a common language. They hugged each other when they each in turn had to go and left smiling and happy.
I think we have forgotten about that sort of communication or the communication of people who work the land out in the sun all day but don’t exchange words and there is still an ongoing dialogue. My dogs for instance don’t speak English or French, but they know when I am sad, or happy or sick.
Sometimes, and this may sound crazy I admit, I benefit more from laughing at/with a friend than I do from deep meditation because in laughter in camaraderie (I can never spell this right) I am living. I can almost feel something within me that’s me but distinct feel this experience of being alive.
The Names
One of the names of God in the Islamic tradition is “al Hayy” meaning The One who is undying, everlasting. The One Life from whom all life arises. The One who calls all life into being. The One who animates all life and who makes each living thing different and distinct. When one contemplates on this aspect of ‘God’ one can experience that one’s living is not distinct from the Eternally Alive and Ever present that which makes everything different and one. Obviously it goes without saying that one doesn’t have to be a Sufi or even know the words al-Hayy to contemplate this. One can look at at nature, at the seasons, at the comings and going, at one’s face in the mirror showing the signs of age next to the face of a child or younger irreverent mischief maker.
So the question stands, what does it mean to communicate, can we do it in a real way beyond the plethora of labels we adorn ourselves with.
